Tourists all around the world are looking for ways to spend their travel dollars. Western Australia needs to be doing more to make sure it’s spent here in our pubs, bars and hotels. When the Western Australian Government has little control over its revenue streams from iron ore royalties, the economic tipping point for our food and beverage, hotel and tourism sector has appeared on the horizon.

Perth is undergoing its largest ever hotel room expansion and will reach an additional 1,900 rooms by 2020. Without adequate destination marketing there could be excess capacity, fewer jobs, weak market and investor sentiment as well as missed opportunities for hospitality.

We must leverage Western Australia’s world-class food and beverage offering and use it to drive demand from tourists across all outlets, pubs, restaurants, bars and fine dining.

A fall in the Australian dollar and cheaper holidays for foreign tourists means the time is now for a major injection into tourism destination marketing by the WA government. WA hospitality and tourism is well positioned to take on staff from a struggling resources sector, indeed state and federal governments have said they are looking to hospitality to fill the gap, but the industry can’t do it on its own. WA hospitality is ready to run at higher capacity; suburban pubs and taverns, inner city bars and restaurants and hotel accommodation can provide much more to the WA economy if the government plays its part.

The ‘build it and they will come’ premise does not apply. Tourism Research  Australia 2013-14 figures show that while the number of visitors has increased marginally they aren’t staying as long and their spend is relatively
unchanged.

Current levels of expenditure on tourism destination marketing leaves Western Australia hugely disadvantaged when compared to our key competition in the eastern states. Perth and Western Australia have so much to offer but our message falls short in enticing more people to visit when our marketing and advertising spend is limited. The 2015 AHA Hospitality Conference featured MasterCard’s Sarah Quinlan who shared that especially Americans
and the British are looking to spend on hospitality and tourism experiences like never before.

To ensure the government’s stimulation of new build hotels and investment in the market is successful, government policy must encourage the growth of business travel and tourism to WA. WA must be seen as more than an occasional major events destination and concentrate on MICE, meeting, incentive, convention and exhibition, visitors and by looking to our Asian neighbours.

The industry is well equipped, we just need to be given the resources to be competitive and tell people why there’s no place in the world like Western Australia.

Bradley Woods
AHA(WA) CEO/Executive Director
CEO’s Report